Of Twitters Comedians and Joke-Thieves

by Kiran George August 20, 2015

1 Comment

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inShar e

A lot of people believe, albeit perhaps ignorantly, that the internet is effectively a Special Privileges
Zone, where the rules of the real world do not apply that it is a free-for-all space where everyone
can take and post whatever they want, from whoever they want, without any consequences
whatsoever. Far too often, writings have been picked up from x and shared by yas status updates
on Facebook, without any attribution to the author, often reflecting the account owners intention
to misrepresent the original authors work as his own. Now effortlessly tickling funny-bones is no
easy feat, mind you. At least once in all of your life, I bet youve found yourself in that awkward
social situation where you just cracked that joke that youd been practising all day one whose
end was met with little else apart from an uncomfortable silence and an awkward shrug or two.
Thats precisely why, when that comedian everybody loves or that friend who has always been the
clown in class, effortlessly packs and brilliantly executes that perfect little joke whether on stage
or via his/her Twitter handle (in the mad pursuit of viral glory, of course), courtesy calls for you to
refrain from sharing that joke with the world by representing it as your own creation.

Jokes require originality, must be credited.

Why? Because lets face it writing a joke isnt much different from writing poetry, or a story even,
for that matter. Coming up with witty two and four liners every other day requires the exercise of
an ample amount of labour and skill well, for at least most of the good ones. The element of
originality, therefore, is inherent in an independent non-plagiarised joke. When plagiarism and
copyright infringement are treated as such grave charges in the academic world, for instance, then
considering how significant their original creations can be for stand-up comedians, why should
jokes not be treated as intellectual property and subjected to the same copyright protections as
other forms of art?

On the other hand, since absolutely forever, people have been stealing each others jokes. It is no
secret that even comedians of the 21st century, and quite often than theyd like to admit, are joke-
thieves and perhaps in most of these cases, jokes arent reproduced verbatim the idea forming
the premise of the joke is the same, but the superficial elements are recycled before presenting it
to the audience. One might argue here, that it is not so much the joke as it is the delivery system
that matters, where comedy is concerned. However, accepting this would essentially mean that
youre okaying the fact that one person is trading off of the popularity of someone elses joke and
extracting value from it so as to add value to his/her own brand/image and mind you, the act of
extracting value could be done for something as simple as increasing your number of followers
on Twitter. This, as you can guess, without bothering to acknowledge the source of your jokes,
deceiving people into thinking Oh, this guys hilarious and calling their friends to tell them how
they simply must check out the new funny guy in towns Twitter handle. Chronic joke thieves just
because most people ignore your antics and the very question of ownership of content on social
networking sites like Twitter, does not mean that such ownership doesnt exist altogether.
Claiming that someone stole your joke, whether you shared it on the internet or otherwise, is a
serious allegation in comedians circles and proving this is a whole other ball game.

If the wording of two jokes arent exactly identical, how can you tell whether one was stolen?
The internet of course, has broadened the potential-copycat circle and also made it easier to point
fingers, all at once. The numbers in your audience has gone from the couple of hundred people
whove watched your shows to the hundreds of thousands of people who, thanks to social
networking websites, dont really have to get off the couch and buy a ticket to hear one of your rib-
ticklers. Anybody on the internet has the option to surreptitiously lift one of your jokes, post it on
Twitter and become a comedy star overnight. But then again, when you see your joke put up and
shared by someone else as their own, isnt it possible that you just turned out to be one of the
dozen or more people that just happened to have independently created the same joke? Cant two
or three similar punchlines just all turn out to be one big, unhappy coincidence? As David
Sims said, Aiming for the lowest common denominator doesnt equal plagiarism.
This brilliant article on Splitsider, whilst mentioning a number of instances of clashes between
famous comedians in the your joke-my joke battle, reads I think its also possible that every
human being has coded within his DNA a basic, natural progression of humor, and that because
all comedians follow this instinct, its fairly common for two comedians who have the same initial
idea to take a joke in the exact same direction..doesnt it seem possible that two isolated
comedians who start with the same, basic truth could each stumble upon a single image that
perfectly illustrates that truth?
It seems to me that one, two, three and even four liners are far more likely to have been
independently stumbled upon by multiple comedians at once, rather than jokes that more
descriptive narratives, taking a while before the punchline finally arrives. Either way, to claim
copyright infringement, the first question to be asked is is the joke so splendidly original, that it
contains elements that is unlike anything that anybody in the comedy circles has ever dreamt up
before? If the answer to this is in the affirmative, then it makes for a strong case of copyright
infringement. In other cases, where were talking about jokes that are so visible and obvious that
anybody could have come up with it, the task of proving infringement becomes a much harder one.
The law in the UK holds that a joke told by a comedian before a live audience cannot be
copyrighted unless it has been recorded in writing or otherwise, beforehand. Which brings me to
my next point where jokes are lifted verbatim (here I speak of the splendidly original kind),
plagiarism is most often than not, clear, and there could lie a case for copyright infringement.
However, in other cases, where only the premise or idea that forms the basis of the joke has been
lifted and the joke itself, has been differently retold, the way forward remains unclear. Could this
then amount to a derivative use of the work a right exclusively falling within the ambit of those
conferred upon the copyright-holder effectively constituting copyright infringement?
Speaking Twitter-wise
A 2008 article on Techdirt laments, Its unfortunate that were now reaching the point that
something that used to be a shared experience is also going down the path to being protected and
limited. Why, pray? There are people whose entire professional careers depend upon the funny
anecdotes they write must they be forced to ignore instances of joke theft because, well, sharing
is good?

Freelance writer Olga Lexell, for instance, wrote to Twitter when she saw her one-liner being re-
tweeted thousands of times over, without any credit whatsoever I simply explained to Twitter that
as a freelance writer I make my living writing jokes (and I use some of my tweets to test out jokes
in my other writing). I then explained that as such, the jokes are my intellectual property, and that
the users in question did not have my permission to repost them without giving me credit. Twitters
crackdown on legitimate complaints of copyright infringing tweets is no different from what
Youtube, for instance, has been doing to deal with similar complaints against videos and I find it
perfectly legitimate because atleast on the face of it, it seems clear that she is in fact, the very
source of the joke. Users have cared little about acknowledging Lexell as the real author who
again, makes a living out of writing what she does- and she cant make them, so shes using
Twitters mechanism to address copyright grievances to take down what is, leaving the whether-
copying-on-Twitter-is-okay debate aside, legally speaking, copyright infringement.
If this was not a Twitter war, but a poetry blog war, where one user has picked up a one liner from
somebody elses blog and put it up on his own without according due credit, any uproar over
copyright infringement by an author of the original writing would have been seen as appropriate
and necessary, with status updates and tweets circulating all over expressing disgust over my,
what the world has come to today. What then, renders tweeters ineligible to do just the same? Is
Lexell really being unreasonable?
The issue here is one that, I believe, could easily be resolved if only people would just abide by
commonly accepted and recognized social norms. You know you didnt write that instead of
falsely representing the writing as your own creation, just credit the source, and youre good to go!
How hard can that possibly be? The issue becomes 5x worse when comedians use plagiarised
jokes during live performances. Im not advocating the odd-seeming idea that comedians must
now begin requesting other comedians for a license to use their joke common courtesy, again,
is all that must be paid regard to, and I think Twitters takedown policy might push people to do just
that.

Its going to be fascinating to see how the law works its way through this little brain teaser.